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Bringing Craigslist Back

I’ve been wrestling with whether to bring back Craigslist listings in the search results. I’ve found a way to include them that I’m told is legally kosher since it doesn’t touch their servers at all, but it still seems somewhat dickish to go against their wishes in this, and I’ve always had a lot of respect for what they’ve done for the world. Also, court seems like it’d be no fun.

But then I did some back of the envelope estimates of how much of people’s time and effort it would waste if I didn’t, and it became clear how much less nice it is to waste the time of millions of apartment hunters out of stubbornness or some clearly inaccurate assumption about the will of the community. If it takes half of PadMapper’s millions of monthly users 3 hours longer now to find an apartment, that’s over 350 man-years wasted per month, or 5 lifetimes. That really pisses me off. Apartment hunting is an activity which, unless you enjoy it or it teaches you something, adds no value to the world, and should be over as quickly as humanly possible so that you can get back to doing other, more productive things.

So, effective as soon as I can bring the new code up (almost certainly by the time you read this), I’m bringing the Craigslist search results back. This will be courtesy of the fine folks at 3taps, who provide an API for data about Craigslist postings that they gather via indirect means and so aren’t subject to CL’s Terms of Use. It’s not nice of me to do from Craigslist’s perspective, and I’d really love to just work with them to solve these problems, but my conscience is clear. I’m still going to send all traffic back to them and all that jazz.

Thanks to everyone who sent them letters, there were a surprisingly large number of you. I was a bit depressed that there didn’t seem to be much of a response from them, but it was pretty incredible to see the outpouring of support (still ongoing), and I really appreciate you all taking the time out to help out with this.

Happy hunting, everyone.
Eric

Update: Edited for language, it was immature of me to curse, sorry.

Update2: There seems to be a lot of confusion, so I should clarify that CL’s legal claim was about their TOU, not about copyright, since PadMapper isn’t reposting the listings, only summarizing bedrooms, bathrooms, price, etc. and linking to the original to read more. Using 3taps just makes it so it’s not a TOU issue.

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130 responses to “Bringing Craigslist Back”

Good for you. You provide a wicked good service. Craigslist’s service has no more benefit than being “first to market” thus coasting on momentum (and, while not being ugly with graphic ads and flashing doodads, also having a workable sparse interface). The fact that they failed or refused to implement what is an insanely useful thing with their data and then tried to stop you from doing it shows why “ownership” of ideas and knowledge is inherently good for the individual and horrible for the group — because it allows the individual to get rich at the expense of the group not getting insanely useful features.

Good! I was SO lost without the Craigslist ads on here!
I did send them a nice email weeks ago, asking them to allow you to use their ads in PadMapper.
Please let us know if there is anything else that we can do.
I dont know why they wouldnt WANT you to use their Craigslist ads — because it sends us to more ads on Craigslist.com, than we would be visiting their site otherwise on our own.

Thank you so much for bringing Craigslist back onto Padmapper! You have no idea how helpful your website is, and how much time it really has saved me in the job search process, not to mention the stress and worry. It’s amazing to be able to come to this website and sort through housing options in such a smooth and intuitive way, and it really does make moving a lot less painful!

Court is no fun, but I’m really sure that if it ever got to that (hopefully not), you’ll have a ton of support from all your users everywhere.

In my opinion, it’s not just a man hours problem. One’s home is the centerpiece of your quality of life, and location is the most vital piece. People need to be able to search by location at the granular level- it’s the difference between a view or staring at a brick wall.

Doesn’t seem to give the same results as before though. For example: in SF, with a limit of 2000, 4 day old posting max, infinite number rooms, there are zero results, and before all this CL bs, there were tons. Looking at my RSS feed of CL there are a ton of results that match this criteria. So i’m not sure whats going on, but definitely doesn’t seem like CL is back in the aggregated results…

Thank you for your continuing efforts though, not to be a whiney person!

As one of the people whose hours (and mental health) were at stake in your calculations, and one of the “community of users” who Craigslist claimed to speak for, thank you so much!!! I’m currently planning a move that requires me to find an apartment within a very short window, and while Craigslist’s postings are indispensible, in raw format the listings in my neighborhood especially are pretty much impossible to use due to rampant misleading locations in post titles (as well as the usual spam and redundant listing problems). When the Craigslist posts disappeared from Padmapper, I was really at a loss.

I know that this was not necessarily the safe decision, so I just wanted to express my thanks for taking the leap to get the Craigslist ads back up, and doing it so quickly (and for saving the experience of moving in with my boyfriend from turning into an unsorted-Craigslist-ads-induced nervous breakdown, at least on my part). I really hope it all goes smoothly for you from here. Padmapper is not just a time but a sanity-saver, and I’ll continue to recommend it whenever a friend is looking to move.

Thank the lord! It does not make sense to me how a company could let people put out information which is freely accessed by anyone, but somehow have the legal authority to prevent others from using the information as they see fit. The information is free! It’s like being angry at someone that takes garbage you put out on the street! Nonsense!

It is a huge relief to see CL posting back on Padmapper.
But Padmapper is so good in it’s own right that during the CL down time I posted my apartment on Padlister and got 8 responses within a week. I was able to rent it without CL.

I appreciate your quality services and I thought you’d like to know that you served me well in your own right even during CL down time. Thanks!

I am also looking for a Seattle apartment and was so relieved to find that CL ads would be coming back to PadMapper. Though there definitely doesn’t seem to be as many pins on Seattle from CL as there were before the purge. Perhaps they’ll all come back with time?

For me, pics aren’t coming through from CL, so if the above poster has “Require pics” checked then he may not be seeing much. That would be my guess as to what’s happening unless my issue with the pictures is isolated.

Bless you, Eric. I’ve been wrestling with lists of craigslist links for a couple weeks and was just starting a spreadsheet where I would put #rooms, location, square footage, rent, etc etc etc. I thought, “I will check padmapper just one more time…even though it will only make me sad and frustrated.” But! Hooray! You have no idea how happy I was to see the craigslist locations are back up! This is going to save me SOOO much time and effort!

The listings are sparse for the city I am looking in as well (Eugene, OR), but I will wait a while and see if it gets populated.

Thank you SOOOOO much. Just yesterday I accepted a job that will take me clear across the country and having padmapper back to full strength is awesome and so helpful. After CL pulled their dick move I decided that I would no longer use their site, as a form of personal protest. Now, since I know they didn’t come to their senses but rather your legal-fu is strong I’ll compromise my boycott and support padmapper…thus making my life remarkably easier. Good show!

So glad you decided to stand up for what you think is right for your users. I’m in DC and I’m only seeing 2-3 listings in the entire District where as before ‘the incident’ there were hundreds. Any insight for me?

I’m not even looking for a place – a buddy is and showed me your site a while ago. Cheers on the site – it is insanely useful! And cheers on not letting c-list’s douchebaggery (sorry, love the site, but they need to take it down a notch in this case) bring you down!

Thanks so much! If I knew you personally, I’d call you and thank you. I was helping some apartment hunters at my workplace today. Both they and I are looking. I’ve got to find a new place in the next 3 weeks and I’m very busy as it is. This really does help me and you have no idea how much! Screw Craigslist, let them bring legal action, if that’s where they’d like to invest their dollars. I think that would bring about some very bad media attention. I’ll be the first to e-mail CNN and any other international news organizations to bring attention to their frivolous cease and desist commands. Good on you, thanks again!

Can’t tell you how happy I am to hear this Eric. I have to move in the next few months and after familiarizing myself with the market in Vancouver through padmapper felt like someone turned out the lights when the CL listings went off line. I’ve actually been starting to get really concerned because weeding through all the various sites was going to take a bunch of time (and with a new baby days away), time I won’t have.

Thanks so much for your site, and your courage to keep pushing forward.

Woot! Woot! Greab job Eric. Glad you and Padmapper.com are back in full force!

I checked out CL’s attempt at converting their apt. listings over to a GUI interface, and it pales in comparison to padmapper.com, which is a pioneer in this realm. The realm of converting 2-dimensional listings into 3-dimensonal listings.

It’s too bad they’re (CL) is stifling innovation.

Keep up the good work and hope this re-invigorates you to think, innovate and code up new and better things that improve/make life easier for the rest of us.

Yeah, PadMapper actually owes a large debt of gratitude to HousingMaps – it came first and paved the way for all Google Maps mashups to follow, and a lot of the tradeoffs (static filter buckets of listings) I think make it much more efficient/cheaper to run. So, much respect to the guy that made it. Thanks for clearing that up, Jessica.

Hey, I’m a little late to this, mostly because I’d given up on this getting fixed. But on a whim I just stopped by Padmapper and found this post! Thank you so much. I’d say you have no idea how much time this is going to save me this summer, but it seems that you DO, actually, and that’s why you’ve done what you’ve done. So, again, thank you.

Hey Eric, I love your site and I’m thrilled you’re bringing CL back. I’ve noticed that the listings are much sparser in the areas I search (Amherst MA primarily) than they were before the cease-and-desist order; do you know why this is? Thanks again.

Thank you SO SO much!!! I’ve been having the hardest time going through craigslist postings one by one only to find out it’s in an area that I’m not looking to rent. It makes me really happy to know that you’ll be restoring listing to padmappers! Can’t say enough how much it’s been helping my apartment search. Thanks!

Erik, have you thought about creating a Padlister add on the padmapper app? I don’t think people want another app to add apartments for rent, but I could see a surge in use from people using Padmapper to list apartments – you’d be at less Rick of CL trying to shut you down again. And, it’d be soooo much easier to list apartments on my iPhone.

PM will force them out of their anti-innovation fog. If CL introduces their own mapping utility (which I doubt) I will still use PadLister because of all the other great features like the online application, the open house utility, etc.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am preparing to move cross-country to an unfamiliar area where knowing the neighborhoods is key. The move date is fast approaching and my heart sank when I read that you could no longer use the Craigslist postings. Now I can see exactly where the properties are and not have to slog through ambiguous posts. I’m footloose and fancy free once more!

Sorry to yell, but that’s how I feel right now. I just got back from vacation to find the best present ever – CL on PM. I am at work, and I am way too happy about all of this properly do my job, and the rest of the office doesn’t understand my joy.

I am currently looking for an apartment in Montreal and have been so happy when I found out about Padmapper. It does make it suck less!
It seems though as if Craigslist is still not available again here. Does that have something to do with it being in Canada?

Thanks for your work on this! You really have saved people tons of time. I used to make my own maps in google maps based on craigslist listings with links. Yes, this was just for my own personal apartment-hunting purposes but was still worth it. Of course PadMapper makes that all obsolete. I always wondered why cragislist never took it to the next level.

The 3taps data apparently often omits information about bathrooms and location. I can easily see from a posting that a place is a 2+2, but the PadMapper email describes it as a “2BR/0BA Apartment”, and plops it in the middle of LA instead of at its actual address (also correctly included in the listing).

This is great news. I came back to check in on several occasions hoping that my (and the many other) emails and letters sent to Craigslist would have some sort of effect but I was quickly losing hope.

I’m very glad that you found a work-around and will be able to get these listings back into PadMapper. I truly hope that this does not cause you any future problems with Craigslist as you do not deserve the hassle and I can’t begin to imagine their concern with your bringing them tons of traffic. The only time I’ve used Craigslist in the past 2 years has been when being directed there by PadMapper.

After reading some of the further comments in this thread and performing a quick google search I see that Craiglist has, in fact, issued an action against you and 3taps.

This news is highly unfortunate and I wish you the best of luck. I know that you are small as compared to Craiglist (and their legal team) but I hope the system will provide you with equal footing and an equal voice as the matter unfolds.

Thank you Eric for providing this important service! I was extremely lucky to find padmapper this spring. I’m going to graduate school in a different state, and I had no idea which neighborhoods/suburbs were closest to my university. As the adage says, location is everything, and posters on craigslist are usually very obscure about the location. So, using craigslist directly was an extremely tedious process.

Padmapper helped me find an apartment that was both close to my school, near public transportation, and at a great price. I hope you will be successful in continuing this service!

[…] but rather the critical mass of connecting people.”As for Mr. DeMenthon of Padmapper, even in the face of legal action, he feels he has a moral obligation to keep the site running. “I don’t have a lawyer,” he […]

Thanks for bringing this back. It stinks that you have to use a workaround like 3taps that apparently doesn’t provide quite as good results, but it’s better than nothing.

The contrast between a company like Google, which makes everything open through APIs, and a company like craiglist, which pretends to be super friendly but quashes any innovation with high-priced lawyers, is interesting.

If Craigslist continues its legal campaign against you I’d donate to a legal defense fund. I’m sure others would too.

First off, let me say that you are a lifesaver Eric. Your site helped me during some of my hardest times in my life; and how it brought me BACK to CL after dropping it’s spam-and-middleman-laden results.

I have nothing positive to say about CL as an organization at this point, and trust me, I’d like to. CL is simply just the de facto standard for online classifieds, say what you want about banner ads, etc, but I’d trade banner-ads for millions of spammy listings any day. I am not a “CL-Hater” to be cool, I’ve just seen and heard too much to pretend they are something they are not.

I have known a few people who have gone up against big companies in court, and prevailed — without huge legal teams, etc. They did however, all have a good lawyer who worked with them as a friend, or on principle. I sincerely hope your case is added to that list, Eric.

What you built added so much to CL, and they greedily tried to snub you for it. Shame on CL!